Paralysis of the Muslim mind

The world has changed beyond recognition. The conditions prevailing in the world, its views, trends and theories have entirely changed. The social problems and issues have taken many turns, but our religious leaders are still living in the same old conditions of past centuries. They made no progress and never tried to understand the ever-new changes and the issues and problems emerging from these changes. Rather they tried to hold back their people from adjusting themselves with the changing times and to pull them back to the past. Such an attempt can and did succeed for some time but not forever. No nation can afford to keep itself aloof and unaffected by the new thoughts and issues for long, while dealing with other nations and countries. If their leadership fails to guide them in the ever-new intellectual, academic and practical issues and problems, then it is quite natural that their followers will discard their leadership.

But the trouble lies actually somewhere else. Getting deeply involved in the side issues, our religious leaders ignored the main issues and problems. Later the main issues were eclipsed by the side issues creeping up in thousands. These side issues carried no real importance in Islam but assumed importance like the fundamentals of Islam.

The progress of Islam suddenly stopped when the Muslim religious leaders and scholars gave up delving into the Quran, stopped, ascertainment and scrutiny of the Traditions of the Prophet Muhammad , blindly followed exegesis's and narrators of Traditions, when the casuistic works of the jurists and scholars of the past were made unalterable and permanent laws, when direct acquisition of knowledge from the Quran and Sunnah (traditions of the Prophet) was given up and when the side issues and the details worked out by the scholars of the past were regarded as the main and principal issues leaving aside the fundamentals of the Quran and Sunnah.

Muslim scholars and researchers got involved in explaining and debating the out-dated issues instead of leading the world in the new field theories and practice. They differed and debated on the details and inferences of the old scholars, forming new factions and groups on the basis of different religious interpretations, indiscriminately declaring their opponents as infidels and deviators from the path of Islam. Instead of attracting the world to the path of Islam, they started discarding even the Muslims as infidels.

Some blamed religion for all the misdeeds and failure of the religious leaders, holding religion as the biggest hurdle in their march towards progress. They openly called the Muslims to discard Islam and follow the developed nations. Some others made it a point to condemn and abuse the Islamic scholars and the religious leaders, as if the secret of progress and prosperity lay only in this reproach and condemnation of religious leaders. Another group started amending and trimming the religion.

The real remedy is to set right the order already reversed. The Quran should be reinstated to its real place of guidance. The traditions of the Prophet should enjoy the same importance and status as enjoyed in the golden era of the Prophet and his devoted companions and all those related to him. The contributions of the past jurists, scholars, commentators and the Traditionalists should be given the same importance and respect as was given to them by the scholars of those days. We should not tamper with anything that needs no change and yet should not take everything of the past thinkers and scholars as the last word and as unalterable verdict, or that their writings have left us in no need of any further deliberations in the Quran and research on the Hadith or that no further research and thinking on Quran and Sunnah is now possible.

Once this sequence is restored, the impeded train of Islam shall start moving again. The train has stopped simply because the engine has been detached and put behind the train, the driver too has left the engine and is seated somewhere in any back cabin, while it is presumed that the front cabin would not only move by itself but also carry the other cabins with it.

Nobody can allege that the religious scholars had somewhere conferred and decided to impose stagnation on Islam and prevent its onward march. This is simply the outcome of the decline in intellectual, literary and ideational faculties of the Muslim communities and their political, military, economic and cultural vigor and strength.

This decline has not only blighted their fighting spirit but also the enthusiasm in the field of academic research and casuistry. As the concept of life and its various problems underwent a change, so changed their notions about religious and academic issues and by and by all their intellectual faculties decayed.

The only remedy possible is a dispassionate study of the malady in depth and of the extent to which it has spread and, with all wisdom, to replace the wrong with the right.

Excerpted and adapted from the book "Let us change the world" by Sayyid Abul Ala Mawdudi